Shelved for 17 years, Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview captures some of the man who would revitalize Apple ten years after he had been thrown out and a year before he would take it back.

Personally, I have not been fan of the Cult of Steve Jobs. The people who slavishly buy every product that Apple has created since the iMac, proclaiming it to be new and brilliant when often it is more accurately described as a polished version of something another company did not do well, annoy me. And yet, it is undeniable that under his reign, both times, Apple has been very successful. First it was putting computers in homes, and later putting computers, well, everywhere.

But back in 1995, Steve Jobs was working at NeXT, ten years out from being fired from his own company, and looking to the next step in computing. As he voices in the interview, Apple is dying. The company has lost its market share and lost any sort of drive or vision it once had. Clearly, the company he founded is in his rear view mirror and he views it with a mixture of success and failure. In 1995, Steve did not know he would return to the fold and bring Apple back from the brink of bankrupcy and take it to being one of the most profitable tech companies in America.

The interview begins with basic stuff, getting a run down of Steve's career, the things that started Apple, all the stuff everyone has heard a million times. But in the latter half, Steve opens up about the end of his run at Apple and how things fell apart. He finishes talking about NeXT and how the Internet is going to be the future of computers. As a nerd myself, I was on the net in 1995, but how many of you were? Perhaps there is something to him being a visionary after all.

The DVD is well worth watching just for this interview alone. But it also has a commentary track for the interview with director Paul Sen and interviewer Robert X Cringely. There is also an hour long interview with Andy Hertzfeld, original Macintosh programmer at Apple, and an audio only interview with Robert X Cringely. The whole package together makes Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview even better.